


Odd One Out

by justsomerain



Series: Autistic Marvel Characters [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Autism, Autistic Character, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 02:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3191510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justsomerain/pseuds/justsomerain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitz had finally managed to shake the "odd one out" thing, after all those years, when it's taken away from him again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Odd One Out

Leo Fitz is the odd one out, and he knows he is, he always has been. When he was a child, at first, it was charming, a small boy with a mass of curls correcting adults, pretending to be an adult, but later he got accused of being haughty and pretending he’s better than others.

He knows he’s not, not intentionally anyway. He’s not better than others. Well, technically he’s more intelligent than a lot of people, and though he used to think, in his early teens, that being more intelligent made him better, he knows now that it’s really not. He’s just Leo and he’s as good or bad as any other person.

Of course, he was still the odd one out, because he was so intensely interested in things, reading everything he could about mechanical engineering, and attempting to build things even when he was about eight years old. His grandmother had given him a set of building things one Christmas, and from then on, each Christmas it would get added to. Components to add electric parts, sets so he could program his own little robots, until finally he had just about everything in the brand’s range of technical building products.

It was partially also because he was always fidgeting with things, hands always moving. Other people thought it was weird, and his nana always told him that there was nothing to worry about. Just do something with it, Leo, is what she would say.

And do something with it he did. Maybe not so much in school, where he would sit, bored, waiting for his classmates to understand the explanation, even though he was younger than the lot of them. So in school he would doodle or just move his hands (keep it small and invisible, even if that wasn’t always possible), and teachers would look at him strangely and worry about it and sometimes even scold him for it because “you’re not some idiot, Leo, behave like a normal kid”.

None of that mattered anymore when he went to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s science division, youngest pupil ever (except for a girl who is twenty three days younger than he is, and who is the most amazing mind he’s ever met).

Because he works hard and aces his classes and finally becomes friend with Jemma Simmons after months of worrying about what to say to her, how to get her attention. And around her he’s not awkward and the urge to move his hands around in nervousness abates a little (though not entirely, never entirely), and she’s amazing and when she says they should go into the field instead of staying inside of a lab the rest of their professional careers he mostly just pretends to struggle with the idea because with Jemma, yes, that would be good. He can trust her and feels safe enough with her that the thought of seeing new places all the time isn’t so scary anymore.

And working on the bus is everything he could have imagined and more, until Grant Ward turns out to be a traitor, and tosses him and Jemma out of the flying airplane in a pressurized container, and the only thing Leo can think to do is to save Jemma, no matter what.

He feels no regret as he gives her the oxygen mask.

Sometimes, now, in dark moments, he does feel regret, when his hands shake too much be functional, when he’s having so much trouble finding his words, and when he realises that the Jemma he sees in the room with him isn’t actually there, because she left because she couldn’t face seeing him like this.

And he’s angry, angry at Jemma, but mostly angry at Ward, who was his friend, or pretended to be his friend, and he had never really had many friends, so it had been special, and then Ward had tried to kill him and Jemma, and that had turned him into something that’s broken and dysfunctional and no matter how many things Fitz can fix, he can’t fix himself, and Jemma ran away because of it.

He’s back to being that weird kid again, the odd one out.


End file.
